The widespread proliferation of small cell deployments in high-speed cellular networks introduces unprecedented management, configuration and monitoring, but also operation challenges to mobile network operators. Small cells can be deployed in areas of poor macro-cellular coverage, as well as in areas where there is increased bandwidth demand, such as in public hotspots and enterprise environments. With this, heterogenous deployments (so-called “HetNets”) comprising cells with diverse power levels are formed, wherein small-cells transmit data at lower transmission power values than macro cells, while they may reuse the frequency spectrum that is currently assigned to macro base stations.
In this context, the explosion in the number of deployed long term evolution (LTE) small cell base stations comes with additional requirements for creating a large number of interfaces between the newly deployed small cells and the backhaul infrastructure. In addition, such deployments exacerbate the interference levels experienced by each mobile device, due to the sharing of the common spectrum between small cells and macro cells. Frequent handoffs from macro cell to small cells, and back as, well as between small cells pose additional challenges in resource management.